The Alternating Gradient Synchrotron (AGS) is a

particle accelerator A particle accelerator is a machine that uses electromagnetic fields to propel electric charge, charged particles to very high speeds and energies, and to contain them in well-defined particle beam, beams. Large accelerators are used for fun ...

located at the

Brookhaven National Laboratory Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL) is a United States Department of Energy national laboratory located in Upton, Long Island, and was formally established in 1947 at the site of Camp Upton, a former U.S. Army base and Japanese internment c ...

in Long Island,

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, United States. The Alternating Gradient Synchrotron was built on the innovative concept of the alternating gradient, or strong-focusing principle, developed by Brookhaven physicists. This new concept in accelerator design allowed scientists to accelerate protons to energies that were previously unachievable. The AGS became the world's premiere accelerator when it reached its design energy of 33 billion electron volts (GeV) on July 29, 1960. Until 1968, the AGS was the highest energy accelerator in the world, slightly higher than its 28 GeV sister machine, the

Proton Synchrotron The Proton Synchrotron (PS, sometimes also referred to as CPS) is a particle accelerator at CERN. It is CERN's first synchrotron, beginning its operation in 1959. For a brief period the PS was the world's highest energy particle accelerator. It ...

at CERN, the European laboratory for high-energy physics. While 21st century accelerators can reach energies in the trillion electron volt region, the AGS earned researchers three

Nobel Prize The Nobel Prizes ( ; sv, Nobelpriset ; no, Nobelprisen ) are five separate prizes that, according to Alfred Nobel's will of 1895, are awarded to "those who, during the preceding year, have conferred the greatest benefit to humankind." Alfre ...

s and today serves as the injector for Brookhaven's

Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider The Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC ) is the first and one of only two operating heavy- ion colliders, and the only spin-polarized proton collider ever built. Located at Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL) in Upton, New York, and used by ...

; it remains the world's highest intensity high-energy proton accelerator. The AGS Booster, constructed in 1991, further augments the capabilities of the AGS, enabling it to accelerate more intense proton beams and heavy ions such as

Gold Gold is a chemical element with the symbol Au (from la, aurum) and atomic number 79. This makes it one of the higher atomic number elements that occur naturally. It is a bright, slightly orange-yellow, dense, soft, malleable, and ductile ...

. Brookhaven's

linear particle accelerator A linear particle accelerator (often shortened to linac) is a type of particle accelerator that accelerates charged subatomic particles or ions to a high speed by subjecting them to a series of oscillating electric potentials along a linear b ...

(LINAC) provides 200 million electron volt (MeV) protons to the AGS Booster, and the Electron Beam Ion Source (EBIS) and Tandem Van de Graaff accelerators provide other ions to the AGS Booster. The AGS Booster then accelerates these particles for injection into the AGS. The AGS Booster also provides particle beams to the

NASA Space Radiation Laboratory The NASA Space Radiation Laboratory (NSRL, previously called Booster Applications Facility), is a heavy ion beamline research facility; part of the Collider-Accelerator Department of Brookhaven National Laboratory, located in Upton, New York on Lo ...

Importance of alternate-gradient focusing

Nobel Prizes

The work performed at the accelerator led to three Nobel Prizes in Physics: *1962:

Leon Lederman Leon, Léon (French) or León (Spanish) may refer to: Places Europe * León, Spain, capital city of the Province of León * Province of León, Spain * Kingdom of León, an independent state in the Iberian Peninsula from 910 to 1230 and again fr ...

Melvin Schwartz Melvin Schwartz (; November 2, 1932 – August 28, 2006) was an American physicist. He shared the 1988 Nobel Prize in Physics with Leon M. Lederman and Jack Steinberger for their development of the neutrino beam method and their demonstration ...

and

Jack Steinberger Jack Steinberger (born Hans Jakob Steinberger; May 25, 1921December 12, 2020) was a German-born American physicist noted for his work with neutrinos, the subatomic particles considered to be elementary constituents of matter. He was a recipient ...

discovered the

muon neutrino The muon neutrino is an elementary particle which has the symbol () and zero electric charge. Together with the muon it forms the second generation of leptons, hence the name muon neutrino. It was discovered in 1962 by Leon Lederman, Melvin Sch ...

. *1976: Samuel C. C. Ting discovered the ''J'' part of the ''J''/ψ and the

charm quark The charm quark, charmed quark or c quark (from its symbol, c) is the third-most massive of all quarks, a type of elementary particle. Charm quarks are found in hadrons, which are subatomic particles made of quarks. Examples of hadrons containi ...

. *1980: James Cronin and Val Fitch discovered

CP violation In particle physics, CP violation is a violation of CP-symmetry (or charge conjugation parity symmetry): the combination of C-symmetry ( charge symmetry) and P-symmetry (parity symmetry). CP-symmetry states that the laws of physics should be t ...

by experimenting with

Kaon KAON (Karlsruhe ontology) is an ontology infrastructure developed by the University of Karlsruhe and the Research Center for Information Technologies in Karlsruhe. Its first incarnation was developed in 2002 and supported an enhanced version o ...

References

External links

Brookhaven National Laboratory: Alternating Gradient Synchrotron web page
* Particle physics facilities Brookhaven National Laboratory {{particle-stub

Importance of alternate-gradient focusing

Nobel Prizes

See also

References

External links